I wanted to post about the meeting, last night, but the roommate and I watched c-list horror movies all night, and I passed out while watching one about a team of live streamers investigating an abandoned asylum in Korea (that wasn’t all that bad).
But there was a quote that I heard at the meeting, and I wanted to share:
“Humility is being okay, even when things don’t go your way.”
(time has passed, and now I have time to write. cw for mild religious/spiritual talk at the end)
I always thought of humility as being more of a “not getting my share of the pie” type thing, which I’ve happily sat out so someone else could have something. Or stepping back when someone else wants to have the light, or even letting a person win an argument, or flipping your stance so you can both let them win and be supportive of them in the process. Or heck, as with my sister (who’s introverted on a shy level), not talking over or interrupting her when she speaks.
But what about bad things? Like not allowing yourself to leave a violent environment because you’re afraid of what would happen? Is it fear that keeps you there because of the potential repercussions? I tend to think so. But where does fear come from?
I’ve read before that the opposite of love is fear. I’ve also read that it’s hate (but in this instance, I think indifference would be a stronger candidate than hate). But truly — you can hate a thing because you love something else too much. The closest thing I ever came to hating was the Detroit Red Wings, the bane of the entire Western Conference back in the mid 90s. My hate turned into confusion as the team went into a rebuilding phase, eventually having a roster loaded with all of my favorite players from across the league. I was so incensed over it that I stopped watching hockey for a few seasons. (this is sports fan hate, not actual disdain).
Now that I think about it, and considering my life experience, I believe love’s opposite is fear. I could love with all my heart, but with that would come multiple efforts to ensure I wouldn’t lose that investment because I was afraid. Afraid of what? As my past would confirm, fear sprouts from losing control of, or perhaps status with, or even being hurt by a person or thing. In my case, fear of rejection. I must do more or else I will lose this thing that I love. So somewhere in my history (probably everywhere), I associated love with fear. Every time I feel that emotion, I automatically feel threatened that it will be taken away.
Pride Has Entered the Chat
If humility is being okay even when things don’t go your way, and if fear is an emotional response to a threat (in this case losing control or status or being hurt), then pride would be the source of the fear.
Woah, woah, let’s not get crazy – I am not a prideful person. I’m quick to admit when I am wrong, I have no problem yielding to others, and I definitely don’t think highly of myself or lesser of others.
Pride isn’t always about having an inflated ego or bloated sense of self-worth. The way I understand it, pride is like a little library that holds record of all the times the ego was attacked or massaged. As we develop, pride becomes the cover, a form of protection. For those of us without an over-exaggerated sense of importance, it’s the dark shadow in the corner in which we hide what we dislike about ourselves — the things we think others will find unappealing. When we feel vulnerable, the shadow gives way to light. Pride fires up in the form of fear, and we act from that fear.
Pies for Sale
Fear causes us to act out in an attempt to protect ourselves. It exposes our lack of trust and encourages us to rely on our own self will. That self will might come about in the form of overachieving, perfectionism, substance abuse, lying, sociotropy (placing higher importance in relationships – people pleasing/approval seeking – instead of independence – autonomy), and many others.
Eventually, these fatalistic attempts at self-preservation will fail, and we’ll be forced to find ourselves filled with remorse, shame, and resentment. In other words, our actions humble us. I’ll say this: I’ve filled my refrigerator with more humble pie than any other thing.
If we allowed ourselves to accept things as they are, we’d never have fallen into the traps of our self will running riot over our lives.
This one time (at band camp), I was an excellent paint mixer. In fact, at the big box department store where I worked, if I was at work, I was the one they called for mixing paint. I was also known for my ability to bake the best French breads, slice perfect deli meats, and even unload pallets of fresh cuts of beef, pork, and chicken faster than any other worker at the store. I was all over the place in there, because of my extensive knowledge of every department in the store. I knew that because of this, I’d never ever be sent to work in apparel, and I was totally fine with that, because I hated apparel. Woe was the day that I found myself folding t-shirts, an activity I loathed. I was miserable. My personal expectations failed me. I believe half my work day was done before I finally stopped whining to myself about it, accept what I viewed as defeat, and finish the job. Turns out, I was better at folding shirts than I thought, as apparently I set a record for most shirts folded in a single day, and I was the only one assigned to the task.
I still hated it, though.
A Call for Faith
Faith is trusting the people, conditions, and moods as they change without feeling the need to force them to remain or adjust to what we believe they ought to be, even when there’s no proof that the outcome will be what we hope for. It’s like a muscle that grows with each moment that we have to rely on it. It’s also the backbone of humility. RT Kendall once said that “if God told me to push a peanut with my nose from Abilene to Sweetwater, I’d do it. I mean, he won’t, but I would.” (paraphrased, this was a live sermon I attended twenty years ago). His point was that we’re most likely going to go through some things that require us to both humble ourselves and rely on faith to get through them. Where fear grows, our faith must be bigger. Where pride swells, we must humble ourselves lower.
CS Lewis wrote, “Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” or as the paraphrased version goes, “Faith is the art of holding on to things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances.”
To me, that quote sums everything up very well. At the end of the day, without faith, we can’t humble ourselves with much success. I know I can’t. I’m learning to use both on the regular, in my current circumstances.